Category Archives: Creatures 2

It was getting to be so easy for me to give up on Creatures 2 worlds. There were just too many problems with the gameplay and built in genetics. And then GimmeCat posted this awesome article on how to pull genetic files from eggs. Great work, GimmeCat!

Now, I was finally able to play with Nova Subterra norns like I’d wanted. Instead of creating a new world to play with and get to know norns, however, I wanted to play around with the genomes, like I often did with Docking Station. Just as with the Kannova, I decided to add instincts to eat other foods and to drink when thirsty. This set of genes missing just seemed very strange to me, especially given the problems with learning that the default genomes had. Then again, looking at the instincts, I also saw that there were 3 instincts to reward eating food and 3 for fruit. One food instinct and one fruit instinct for The Embryo, Adolescent and Adult stages. Uh. What?

Anyway, instead of replacing these, I instead added the new instincts for each of the three life stages used by the food and fruit instincts. To start with, I added the instincts to drink when thirsty. Why was this missing? Then, instincts to push dispensers when hungry. Finally, I added instincts to eat seeds, leaves and roots. Before too long, I had my first test norns.

These two are some of the updated norns. I decided on the Bahama norn sprites only because I like them. I added more norns just like them to pad out the population a little and hopefully prevent extinction. Now I only had to wait to see what the eight of them would do.

They spent much of their time wall bonking, unfortunately. After a while, I moved them to the lower level near the swamp, where the carrots and potatoes were growing. I thought at the very least that the abundant food would be good for them. Unfortunately, a few died anyway. Perhaps I should add instincts to eat flowers? It was an idea, anyway. Another idea? I should probably take the time to teach these guys some lessons about life. This test group wasn’t doing so well. Eventually, the game crashed anyway.

When I loaded up Creatures 2 for the day, I decided to make this run more wolfling in nature. I found the Creatures too stubborn or unintelligent and it was a terrible strain on my patience. That said, this group stuck together so it made monitoring them very simple.

Unfortunately, they didn’t always do a great job tending their needs and often looked unhappy.

Eventually, Dodger took the lift up to the first powerup and I coaxed him into pressing it. For a while, he only tried to “get” and “run” from it, but things eventually worked out. For a little while, anyway.

Eventually, and seemingly out of the blue, Ernest died at 1 hour, 11 minutes. Though I’d found the science kit, I wasn’t actually able to use it to figure out what was wrong with Ernest. Perhaps a glitch? The game wasn’t running smoothly for me anyway, so I used the game state controller to fix things. Unfortunately, the trick didn’t work and Ernest floated up into the sky. I still had no idea what happened to him.

I’m still getting used to blogging for Creatures 2 in particular, and I’m a little ashamed to admit that I didn’t even know the names of the norns in this group.

The bright side to this initial confusion was that the norns stuck together in the incubation area. Of course, I was able to forgive myself for not knowing them better once I looked at their ages. Isabelle, our oldest, was just short of an hour old! Of course I didn’t know them! I hardly had any time to get to know them. For now, though, it seemed like they were content to pace around the second learning computer and the collection of dispensers I placed around them.

Some of them pressed dispensors, but most of the time, they were happier pushing the fire, hitting each other and complaining. Good old norns. It seems like they hardly changed over the first three games, at least at a surface level. I knew the changes were much deeper than that, in their programming and genetics, but it’s still fun to consider what they all have in common.

Of course, it wasn’t long til one of our norns was old enough to breed. Isabelle was now an hour and 10 minutes old, finally starting her first reproductive cycle. It was interesting to take the time to watch her experience a cycle, especially with the aid of a graph. It’s something I never took a long look at before. Katie was just behind her and then the boys, so I at least had another 20 minutes before I had to worry about babies. Basically, I didn’t have to be worried about getting swarmed, even though I considered making this into a wolfling style world.

Of course, 20 minutes eventually came and went and I had to start worrying about the eggs that would come soon. I figured Ernest would be the first father because of his 5 minute lead on Dodger, but it was really anybody’s guess.

I finally got some free time where I don’t have a terrible headache, so I’m making time for Creatures. Hooray!

The babies didn’t stray far from the incubator and nursery yet, but I was hoping that at least one of them would wander away and help me collect power ups.

Who would it be? Well, we’d just have to wait and find out. In the meantime, the babies were actually eating seeds and roots and fiddling with the dispensors. They had instincts to push them, but they also experimented with pulling them, which didn’t produce any result. A pleasant side effect to this fiddling was that norns were also pressing the drink dispensor, so portable drinks were always available. How handy!

Eventually, the norns started to crowd around each other. I managed to separate Dodger from the group and I tried to lure him over to the second learning computer. Getting one over there would be a good start in getting them all to wander, but Dodger basically trapped the lift by falling asleep right in front of it. When he did finally wake up, he must have been very thirsty, because he stood in front of the water fountain for a while and drank. Good thing, too! This is exactly the kind of behavior I was looking for in a thirsty norn.

It took some doing, but I finally lured everyone down to the second computer and brought their dispensors with them. I wasn’t really expecting everyone to learn their words completely, but this would at least make it easier to communicate with me and with each other. Besides, if one norn didn’t learn a word, chances are, the others could teach it.

Our youngest, Dodger, was now 22 minutes old and our oldest, Isabelle, was finally getting to be breeding age. Unfortunately, she became ill! With a little alone time, she healed on her own. With no science kit, I wasn’t able to find out what was wrong, but I’m glad she got better. Hopefully, things go so smoothly next time!